#166 Editing Pt1

Organizing your media

• Keep it simple, keep it lean

Consistent, uncluttered, organization of media that would allow you to return to the project 3 years later and find everything even though you've completely forgotten everything about the job. Although I didn't refer to organization of files on the desktop level, I strongly suggest that you organize all your media in the same hierarchical fashion both in your editing software and your computer's hard drive.

Something else I didn't mention it in the show which I will have to discuss it at length in a later show is that a very important part of organization occurs on the other end of of production, when you're done: consolidation.

Consolidation is the process of saving out the project and all the pieces of media that was used in the projects - in one folder. This is done once you are finished and you're preparing to archive everything and take it offline.

Someday you're going to want to re-edit this video, include it in your reel, or a compilation, or just find a piece of footage that you used and consolidation is a critical, time saving process you can use to do that.